STEFAN ZWEIG: FAREWELL TO EUROPE -- Maria Schrader's look at the Austrian writer

What a smart, resourceful and especially interesting idea it was for actress/filmmaker Maria Schrader to conceive of a film about the last years of the famous Austrian writer and public figure Stefan Zweig -- a Jew who had to leave Nazi Germany while there was still opportunity -- as a series of public appearances at various events around the world to which Zweig had been invited. This works better than one might imagine for several reasons. As director and co-writer (with Jan Schomburg), Ms

Schrader, shown at right, uses these settings as glorious visual set-ups (her opening is a knockout of marvelous color and surprise) that slowly allow us to enter the mind and heart of her protagonist, the very quiet and understated Herr Zweig, who was in his time and due to the popularity of his writings, a major worldwide celebrity. He also seems to have been, in the view of the filmmaker, a fellow who believed in peace and prosperity for all, as well as in the sanctity of Europe as a kind of nation unto itself. (How timely: Are you listening, Dictator Trump and would-be dictator Le Pen?) So strongly, in fact, does Zweig feel this that he refuses -- early on in the Nazi take-over of Germany and Austria -- to outright condemn the Hitler regime.

This makes for anger and resentment among some of his peers at the P.E.N. Congress that Schrader lets us attend, but as we come to understand Zweig's feelings and beliefs (he is played by that fine actor Josef Hader, shown below and at far left in the photo, right) and watch him in action and repose, this attitude makes more and more sense. The man hoped, past all hope, for some kind of peaceful conclusion to events in Germany, Austria, Europe and the world. He also, in his exile, never stopped longing for the Europe he so hugely missed.

In STEFAN ZWEIG: FAREWELL TO EUROPE, we travel with Zweig and his second wife, Lotte (Aenne Schwarz, below, right) to various spots in South America, to New York for a visit with his first wife and family, then back again to South America, where he takes up -- against his deepest wishes -- a kind of permanent residence that turns out to be far too temporary.

In New York we meet that first wife, Friderike, played with her usual restraint coupled to her classic beauty by Barbara Sukowa, below. The family scenes here, filled as they are with tinges of regret and sadness, are quietly fraught and seem particularly moving.

Each scene in Ms Schrader's movie is beautifully and delicately acted by the entire ensemble so that we catch the tiniest nuance, as well as much of the history/exposition embedded quite naturally and smartly into the movie's excellent dialog.

Consequently, we come away feeling as though we know this man, his life and surroundings, about as well as we could hope to, given the film's 106 minute running time.

The lushness and beauty of South America is also captured exquisitely. We feel Zweig's love and admiration for Brazil and elsewhere on this southern continent, even as we see his homesickness increasing and depression on the rise.

TrustMovies did not know much of anything about this author, prior to viewing Schrader's film, so he was surprised indeed by the movie's final scene, which the filmmaker handles with fine tact and grace. I suspect Zweig himself would understand and appreciate the actions of the loving maid at film's end. All told, this is a masterful and very beautiful piece of work.

From First Run Features, Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe , after playing the festival ciurcuit, opens in its U.S. theatrical premiere this Friday, May 12, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. It will plays additional cities thereafter (in Los Angeles it opens at Laemmle's Royal on June 16). Click here to view all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

The dark & sterile night of current Europe: Nikolaus Geyrhalter's hypnotic ABENDLAND

First released theatrically in March of 2011 (in its home country of Austria) but filmed across Europe between October 2008 and November 2010, ABENDLAND, the latest documentary from Nikolaus Geyrhalter, holds a camera up to the then present-day Europe, filmed only at night and in beautifully compo-sed shots, to reveal a continent trying to hold on to its humanity, some-times in very odd ways.  Since then, things have only grown worse.

Herr Geyrhalter, shown at left, who earlier gave us Our Daily Bread, is back again in a similar style: all visual, no narration, with occa-sional unrehearsed conversations recor-ded but barely heard. This makes us pay far greater attention than we would need to, were everything doled out to us on a platter and made easily digestible. Instead we piece together what's going on and why, and how this all fits into Geyrhalter's vision (the filmmaker both directed and handled the cinematography), which in time becomes our own vision. Not that Nikolaus forces his viewpoint upon us, but as the movie proceeds we cannot help but see and understand things as does this unusually gifted and thoughtful cinematician.

The film also credits one, Wolfgang Widerhofer for the film's editing and "dramatic structure." Widerhofer also edited Our Daily Bread and the recent pedophile picture Michael; he clearly knows his way around editing and structure.  One of the first see things we see here are security cameras, lurking and looking, then we're off to a gypsy encampment in Italy (the exact country we  are in is never stated; we have to listen to the occasional speech -- not always available -- to pick up the language of the place), which is about to be destroyed and its people moved elsewhere. We see the camp pre- and post-destruction.

Now we're in a pristine hospital, watching a woman and her newborn -- perhaps premature, for we we next see a nurse tending to a tiny incubated infant. And then we're at a meeting of a sub-commission of the European Parliament (below), listening (or reading subtitles) as the chairman explains that Bosnia and Herzegovina are still not satisfied with their situation. (Well, who of us is, but still...) In this scene a number of languages come together. We're then whisked off to a chicken cooking facility (shades of Our Daily Bread) and an enormous sort of Beer Garden (above) where huge crowds have gathered to eat, drink and party. This sort of thing resembles hell on earth to me, but the party-goers appear to be having fun.

Then it's back to security cameras, this time outside a Barclay's Bank in London (the name of which should resonate now, as the current LIBOR scandal unravels, much more than when the film was shot: Those cameras tell us the date was July 28, 2009). After which, we're with a group of men working the late shift in an aircraft factory. Here, the colors and composition are gorgeous (the composition often is throughout the film, but the colors are unusually bright). And who is that? Looks like some high-level religious figure -- ooops, it's the Pope! -- who is being celebrated and asked by the crowd an important question. His "answer" is bullshit, because it does not actually answer the question; the Lord's Prayer is intoned; and then, as all is clearly A-OK, security takes His Holiness away.

We next get a newscast from Britain: The usual: from terrible deaths in Pakistan to the Burberry raincoat company, trying to make a couture comeback. Both stories are given equal weight, of course. This is the news.  We watch, as postal workers sort mail using the spoken word to differentiate -- this is fun and odd -- and then we follow a fellow at work at his home computer. We're made privy to a suicide hotline (or maybe it's simply some very good telephone therapy); the police come to find a man's brother, who is evidently "wanted"; we visit a porno site with a man and woman first fucking, then chatting and showering (Are they a couple? Perhaps, and if so, this is an interesting, calorie-burning way to earn one's living.)

Cut to some hospital maintenance, washing a patent, changing his or her sleeping position, and tending to the general needs. Now it's police vs demonstrators against... what? Toxic waste, perhaps. Immigration raises its head in a meeting between a needy illegal and a kindly but distant volunteer. The airport is shown during midnight maintenance, as scrubbing continues on everything from mirrors to toilets. Oh-oh: it's a crematorium, super-clean and spacious (shown in photo at bottom), as one body after another is reduced to ash and bone.  Immigration again, as authorities check the sea wall (below) for any breech. Finally, a rock concert and a sea of bodies (mostly young) and lights.

The above description may sound awfully dry, and yet this movie is anything but. It's dark twice over: the entire film takes place in nighttime after all, but it also leaves you with a feeling of a Europe problemed in ways that do not make for easy solutions. What is the filmmaker saying?  Nothing terribly simple nor obvious, I suspect. Repeated screenings might give up more meaning, but on a first viewing, the film is nearly hypnotic. It's hard to pull yourself away from it. Geyrhalter and Widerhofer are artists first, propagandists second (if at all). And they are very humane. Even at the rather large distance they keep you -- by virtue of no narration, little verbiage from any of the people you see, and no sense of taking sides with or against anyone -- you'll still come away from this movie with both a sense of sadness and of hope for humanity.

Abenland, which translates officially as Occident or western world, opens today, July 27, in New York City at Anthology Film Archives for a one-week run. Screening are Saturday and Sunday at 5, 7, and 9pm; Monday through Friday at 7 and 9pm. I hope some company will see to it that a DVD is released eventually, maybe even a Blu-ray, as this is a film you may want to see more than once. Click here for directions to AFA.